To protect company network from malware, worm, virus, spam, etc in suspected malicious web sites, we need to define an URL block list (in next section), and setup to restrict those URLs in our network Firewall. This post will list out those suspected URLs, and we will submit this document to management review and approve.

WHAT IS ITIL?

ITIL is the most widely adopted approach for IT Service Management in the world. It provides a practical, no-nonsense framework for identifying, planning, delivering and supporting IT services to the business.

ITIL: OVERVIEW AND BENEFITS

ITIL advocates that IT services must be aligned to the needs of the business and underpin the core business processes. It provides guidance to organizations on how to use IT as a tool to facilitate business change, transformation and growth.

The ITIL best practices are currently detailed within five core publications which provide a systematic and professional approach to the management of IT services, enabling organizations to deliver appropriate services and continually ensure they are meeting business goals and delivering benefits.

The five core guides map the entire ITIL Service Lifecycle, beginning with the identification of customer needs and drivers of IT requirements, through to the design and implementation of the service into operation and finally, on to the monitoring and improvement phase of the service.

Adopting ITIL can offer users a huge range of benefits that include:

improved IT services

reduced costs

improved customer satisfaction through a more professional approach to service delivery

improved productivity

improved use of skills and experience

improved delivery of third party service.

ITIL USERS

ITIL has been adopted by thousands of organizations worldwide, such as NASA, the UK National Health Service (NHS), HSBC bank and Disney™. ITIL is also supported by quality services from a wide range of providers including examination institutes, accredited training providers and consultancies, software and tool vendors and well known service providers such as IBM, Telefonica, HP and British telecom (BT).

A comprehensive qualifications scheme offering a variety of training courses and certifications has been developed against the guidance. This scheme can help organizations to effectively implement ITIL, achieving success by ensuring that employees have the relevant knowledge, skills and techniques, but most importantly, ensuring the entire organization is using a common language and are fully invested in the process.

ITIL Best Practices also underpin the foundations of ISO/IEC 20000 (previously BS15000), the International Service Management Standard for organizational certification and compliance. Organizations can therefore implement ITIL to achieve organizational certification.

Open source configuration management tools make managing servers at scale easier, less time-consuming and more repeatable.

Configuration management toolsprovide automation, cloud orchestration, and remote management and execution that give IT greater control over its entire infrastructure. Beyond standardizing configuration on servers, the tools can install and maintain packages, upgrade or deploy new servers and manage a cloud infrastructure.

Without configuration managementtools, IT administrators would manually deploy each VM needed in an OpenStack, Amazon Web Services, VMware ESXi or other environment. Instead of logging into each server to manually patch it, a systems administrator can remotely patchthousands of servers at the same time. The same goes for removing a user from servers.

“All of your server configuration is going to stay the same and consistent across your environment,” said Nitin Madhok, a systems developer and programmer on the infrastructure code teamat Clemson University. “So, if you installed an application on one server, you could install that application on a dev, production, test or whatever environment it is in the same way, following the same steps.”

Companies can immediately fix security vulnerabilities such as Heartbleed on thousands of user-facing servers in under five minutes. LinkedIn manages more than 70,000 serversand can make a change on all of them in under a minute.

Chef, Puppet, Ansible and Salt are four major open source configuration management tools– each with distinct differences. Puppet and Chef are coded in Ruby, a less commonly known programming language among IT professionals. Salt and Ansible use the more common language, Python, and users only have to be familiar with YAML (yet another markup language) to operate them. Salt and Chef also use ZeroMQ protocol, which allows users to create complex communication systems with little effort.

Salt and Puppet use a daemon approach and must be installed on every server. This allows for a master-slave control architecture. Chef and Ansible are daemonless, so no software takes up resources on the VM to manage it. The open source tools do require open Port 22 on each VM, which could leave servers vulnerable to attack. Salt also has a Secure Socket Shell tool, called Salt SSH, which allows the user to configure it similarly to Ansible. Each of these open source configuration management tools also come in supported, purchased enterprise versions that offer additional modules or features.

Python Program Example 1.

If you’re going to need a refresh on the same tab, you’ll need selenium webdriver. After installing selenium using pip, you can use the following code:

from selenium import webdriverfrom selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keysimport timedriver = webdriver.Firefox()driver.get("http://www.python.org")while True: time.sleep(10) driver.refresh()
If you are browsing a static page, you can pass a parameter in it and run, for example passing "pycon" to search as below script:
from selenium import webdriverfrom selenium.webdriver.common.keys import Keysdriver = webdriver.Firefox()driver.get("http://www.python.org")assert "Python" in driver.titleelem = driver.find_element_by_name("q")elem.clear()elem.send_keys("pycon")elem.send_keys(Keys.RETURN)assert "No results found." not in driver.page_sourcedriver.close()

Python Program Example 2.

from link http://geekinessthecoolway.blogspot.hk/2013/05/tired-of-refreshingscript-for-automatic.html

A script will automatically refresh the page after every few seconds,so that my keyboard’s F5 button is spared. But still there is redundancy, one has to keep looking at the same thing again and again to check if any change has happened. So,I added few more lines to the script. Now whenever the result will be declared (or there will be any new notification) a song will start playing automatically.

Recently, I browsed a useful web blog about IT management, called “Capterra IT Management Blog” from link –> http://blog.capterra.com/the-top-3-free-and-open-source-itam-software-solutions/ . It listed out three open source IT asset management software. They are useful, so I copy and share in it for your reference.

This free IT asset management solution has been around since 2002 and is available for both cloud and on-premise (Windows and Linux)

Pros

With SysAid’s asset management solution, users have access to all the standard features of licensed ITAM software, including the ability to view all software and hardware, as well as the manufacturer details of computers, printers, and other networked devices. Other benefits include automatic notifications of asset changes and the ability to create management reports.

SysAid’s IT Asset Management edition also offers a free, fully functioning IT Service Desk with ITSM capabilities for those interested.

This solution supports up to two administrators, 100 assets, and 100 end users, with an international online community for support.

Cons

Some reviews noted a lacking user-interface that may run too slow for some.

This ITAM free and open source option is written in PHP and has been downloaded 77 times since its creation in early 2013.

Pros

This ITAM software solution offers a streamlined user experience with a dynamic dashboard for users to search through, add, update, and delete vendor details or categories. Users occupy two roles (lab operator and administrator), where they can add, update, delete stocks and assign any hardware or software to labs. Assets can also be assigned to others users for delegation.

This option is available for both Windows and Linux.

Cons

The last time Asset Management Software was updated was back in 2013 and there isn’t an active support community posting tickets or patches to improve potential flaws.

This free IT and asset management software uses a variety of languages, developed using PHP, and uses MySQL/MariaDB for the database, HTML for the Web pages, CSS for style sheets, and XML for report generation. In 2011, 1.2 million computers reported using this solution.

Pros

GLPI includes more than just a management system, also offering a service desk ITIL, license tracking, and software auditing. Through its asset management feature, users can collect an inventory of computers, printers, and other networked devices, as well as track equipment bookings, check equipment status, and manage contracts and documents related to inventory. GLPI can also generate reports for hardware, software, and networked items.

GLPI is also a multilingual solution, with more than 45 operating languages available.

Cons

Some reviews have noted installation difficulties, though users can also find support through the software’s forum.